Hunger in America In 1995, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) began measuring hunger in America. At that time, the USDA began using the term “food insecurity” because it describes a broader understanding of hunger and the health impacts of hunger. Food insecurity is the lack of access to enough food for an active and healthy life. This definition has two components: 1) enough food, 2) for an active and healthy life. A person might eat enough food, but it might be poor quality, or nutrient deficient food. This means the person is unable to live an active and healthy life.(1) I rely on the above definition of food insecurity for the purposes of this article. In addition, I also use the following terms: Food security: People have access to enough food for an active, healthy life for
all household members at all times. The United States remains the richest country in the world, yet millions of Americans do not have enough food to eat each day. Those who live in poverty and struggle each day to survive do not have a recognized face in our society. In fact, many middle and upper class Americans have never seen, let alone spoken to, a poor person and have little or no understanding of the pervasiveness and destructiveness of hunger and poverty. Because we choose not to notice poverty, ignorance defines our view of the impoverished, enabling us to judge and label them as lazy, or to believe that those on welfare continue to have children so they can collect benefits. As a result, millions of American parents and children go hungry each day. The parents live with the constant stress of wondering where the next meal will come from. Nutritious food is a basic human necessity. This necessity is something the privileged among us often take for granted. How else can we explain the oversized portions that are served at restaurants or the amount of good food that is wasted or thrown away from restaurants and upper middle class homes each night? What does it say about us as a nation when we complacently accept an enormous amount of food waste, but also accept that a mother who hasn’t eaten for days puts her children to bed without dinner because the food stamps and money for the month ran out? The word, “hunger”, brings to mind images of starving children in Africa with distended bellies and flies in their eyes. Because we don’t see children who look like that in America, many believe that hunger is not an issue here. But hunger does exist here, even if it shows a different face. Lack of food and lack of adequate nutrition cause severe health and learning problems. Studies show that children who do not get enough to eat and who are eating nutrient deficient foods have learning difficulties. This is why the school breakfast program, which offers free breakfasts to children of low-income households, developed. Furthermore, children with food insecurity are at risk for a myriad of health problems, including chronic illnesses that will keep them from attending school on a regular basis. When children who are chronically sick need to go the hospital, the parent must miss work, possibly for several days at a time. Children who live with low food security or very low food security are more likely to have behavioral problems and to experience an inability to learn satisfactorily. If we cannot feed and educate our children, the future is lost. The situation is unacceptably bad now and the economic recession is making it worse. This means that the next generation of our children is headed for a dark and hopeless future. When referring to the increasing numbers of children who suffer the most from hunger and poverty, Philadelphia hunger expert and founder of the “Witnesses to Hunger” project in Philadelphia, Mariana Chilton said: “This is a catastrophe. This is not a blip. This recession will be in the bodies of our children.”(3) On November 16, 2009, the USDA released the results of their annual study on food security in the United States. The study reports that, in 2008, 49.1 million people, including 17 million children, were unable to consistently get enough food to eat. These are the highest reported figures since the USDA began measuring hunger in 1995. “Of those 49.1 million, 12 million adults and 5.2 million children reported experiencing the country's most severe hunger, possibly going days without eating. Among the children, nearly half a million in the developmentally critical years under age 6 were going hungry. That's three times the number in 2006.” (4) These numbers are alarming on their own, but they show a 3.5 percentage point jump over the reported numbers in 2007.(5) In addition, these statistics represent the figures for last year, meaning that the present recordable number of adults and children who are food insecure is far worse as a result of the current nationwide unemployment rate of 10.2 percent. According to the USDA report, the South reported the highest number of households in both the low food security and very low food security “categories, at 15.9 percent, followed by the West at 14.5 percent, the Midwest at 14 percent, and the Northeast at 12.8 percent.” (6) In addition to those who live in extreme poverty, the USDA report shows the tremendous strain on the working poor of this country - working households that are still struggling to put enough food on the table. The national poverty level for a family of four is $22,000 per year.(7) According to Alfred Lubrano, a poverty reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, even families of four who earn between $29,000 and $44,000 were still reporting being food insecure.(8) Also, according to Chilton, 85 percent of the families who report being food insecure have at least one working adult in the household. (9) Children are most affected by hunger, whether directly because they don’t have enough to eat and suffer the physical and cognitive consequences, or indirectly because their parents live in constant stress over how they will feed the family. Often parents do not have enough money to both buy food and pay the bills, so they have to choose between these two. Whichever choice the parents make, that choice undoubtedly affects the children. Chilton describes a mother who had food - rice and beans - in the house, but did not have any money to pay her bills. There was no gas or electricity in the house; consequently, she could not cook the food for her children. (10) Parents living with the stress of poverty and going for days at a time without any food report high rates of depression. Mothers in food insecure homes are “...three times more likely to report depression as women in homes with adequate food.”(11) If a depressed parent cannot afford nourishment and treatment for her/himself, how is that parent able to raise a physically, mentally, and emotionally balanced child? No matter how hard s/he tries, such a parent cannot fully shield her/his child from the stress and related consequences of living with low or very low food security. When President Obama received the results of the USDA study, he “...called the report ‘unsettling,’ adding: ‘Our children's ability to grow, learn, and meet their full potential - and therefore our future competitiveness as a nation - depends on regular access to healthy meals.’”(12) The part of Mr. Obama’s statement about children is correct, but his focus on our nation’s ability to compete entirely misses the point. When a mother cannot feed her child or when she must go without food for days so that her child can have a small amount, does Mr. Obama really think that she is thinking about “our future competitiveness as a nation”? As the leader of the richest country in the world, why isn’t he focused on first nourishing its citizens? Because we are a capitalistic society, we measure things with cost/benefit analysis, usually in monetary or material terms. However, if on the one hand we waste more food than any other country in the world, and on the other hand accept that 49 million of our citizens are hungry, where are our values? If 17 million children are reported hungry, yet child obesity is on the rise because the food they consume is lacks adequate nutrition, does our nation even stand a chance to survive, let alone competitive in the world? This obsession with economic growth and the status of this country in the eyes of the world could be the root of our social problems and could lead to the downfall of our nation. Lack of regular access to healthy and nutritious food is the beginning of larger societal problems. One mother, a participant in the Witnesses to Hunger project, observed that the increasing levels of crime are a direct result of not having access to the basic necessities, such as food. She said that many of those who commit crimes in her neighborhood have not eaten in weeks; they cannot afford a place to live so they stay in abandoned unheated houses.(13) They see crime as their best alternative. When trying to solve hunger, one must look at the scope of the problem. Often, it goes beyond the availability or lack of food. Chilton describes the case of a young child with failure to thrive, meaning the child was not gaining weight. Chilton said the nutritionist who met with the family told them the child needed to sit at the table for regular meals because there was too much chaos in her environment. After a short time, when the nutritionist observed that the child’s weight and health were not improving, she decided to make a home visit. Upon entering the home, she found that the family did not even have a kitchen table. In fact, there were no tables in the house! (14) Unfortunately, this is a common experience for children and families who experience low and very low food security. Arleen Shuster, a registered dietitian with the Women Infants and Children food supplement program (WIC) in Washington County, Maryland observed that many of the women she counsels do not know how to cook. Many of them do not have basic cooking supplies, such as pots, pans, measuring spoons and cups. Shuster observes that these mothers’ low literacy rates prevent them from reading or understanding the directions on the back of a soup can or the side of a box, much less reading and following a recipe. In addition, many children and poor families do not receive the necessary aid to which they are entitled. “[Another] USDA report, based on 2007 data, said that nationwide, an average of 66 percent of eligible Americans got food stamps.”(15) The income guidelines to qualify for food stamps are extremely low. A household of four with no elderly members, for instance, qualifies for food stamps if the net monthly income is no more than $1,838.(16) Women in the Witnesses to Hunger Project report the consequences of working an additional one or two hours in a month. With the extra hours of work, their net monthly income exceeds the food stamp guidelines, which results in revocation of their benefits.(17) As a result, the food stamp income guidelines can become a disincentive for people to work or find higher paying jobs. Research on welfare classifies this as the “cliff effect”, meaning that if someone makes just over the income guideline, s/he falls off a cliff of welfare assistance - or s/he falls through a hole in the safety net.(18) Government assistance programs, like the food stamps program, need to have a realistic cutoff line; the limit should be higher than it currently stands. In another study of 29 years of data released in the “Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine”, researchers found that 50 percent of children in the United States will be on food stamps in their lifetime.(19) The study found that “one in three white children and 90 percent of all black children – ages 1 through 20 – will use the program.” (20) Hunger experts agree this trend will only grow worse with the current economic recession. Shuster also reports that in her 15 years with WIC, she has seen multiple generations of the same family remain dependant on the program. According to Mark R. Rank, a sociology professor at Cornell University and coauthor of the Archives study, the results indicate, “Americans' economic distress is much higher than we had ever realized.”(21) In addition, the study “...finds that continued food-stamp usage signifies a kind of poverty that is "...a threat to the overall health and well-being of American children...”’ (22) Through misinformation, which breeds stigma and ignorance of welfare and welfare programs, many Americans blame the poor for their own situation, believing “...the poor spend unwisely. [Most Americans] have no idea how little the poor have, no sense of how hard it is.”(23) This attitude directly affects how the government allocates its resources. According to the Archives authors, the United States government, reflecting the wishes of its voting population, generally favors aiding the elderly over poor children. According to research released this month by analyst Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank, “Per capita, the United States spends 2.4 times as much on the elderly as on children – around $22,000 in federal money per elderly person and nearly $9,000 per child.” (24) “At the same time, child poverty is nearly twice as prevalent as elderly poverty – 19 percent compared with 9.7 percent, Isaacs said.” (25) Even with these statistics, the government’s spending decisions remain a reflection of the voters’ wishes. Senior citizens form a more powerful voting bloc than voiceless children. Thus, Social Security is the number one poverty program in the United States. (26) One mother in the Witnesses to Hunger project observed, “It seems like America has turned a blind eye to the fact that people are hungry on a day-to-day basis.” (27) According to child and welfare advocates, welfare helped many poor children in the past, “...but changes in 1996 moved thousands of women and children off the rolls.” (28) Sharon Ward, director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center in Harrisburg said that, in Pennsylvania today, 216,926 people are receiving welfare benefits; 72 percent of them are children. “In 1996, when welfare was changed, about 600,000 women and children received benefits.” (29) However, experts agree there has been little change in the poverty rate since 1996. According to advocates, “Poverty has not been solved by welfare changes - only that many poor children who legitimately need welfare can no longer get it...” (30) Even with food stamps, however, families and children are not guaranteed healthy nutritious food. With the rising cost of food, many parents are forced to shop at discount grocery stores that do not carry a selection of nutritious food. In addition, parents frequently lack nutrition information and simply want their children to feel satiated. Shuster recounted the story of a mother who saved her money so that she could buy fruit snacks for her children, believing the snacks were healthy because she thought they were made with fruit. Shuster described another mother who fed her children Spam and Slim Jims from the dollar store because these items were cheap and satisfied the children’s hunger. Without realizing it, she was severely harming her children’s health by feeding them excessive amounts of sodium. This lack of regular access to nutritious food combined with the lack of knowledge regarding nutrition explains high obesity rates, especially in impoverished communities. Hungry poor people often eat whatever they can in order to feel full. This often leads to consumption of foods which are inexpensive, yet contain empty calories and/or foods containing high fructose corn syrup. According to Lubrano, a calorie of apple or tomato costs more than a calorie of Twinkies or Ho Hos. Good food costs more money, and good food is far less plentiful in poor neighborhoods. The combination of these two factors contributes to a serious problem. (31) The WIC program is one of the best programs available to educate parents and
provide healthy and nutritious food. “New research by Children’s HealthWatch
shows that:
Take Action:
Mariana Chilton outlines two major actions you can take. The first is to ensure that there is government and corporate accountability. If we hold it accountable, the government can step in to ensure that corporations pay their employees a living wage rather than the minimum wage. Chilton points out that, in Philadelphia, a mother with two children needs to make about $27 per hour in order to be self-sustaining. We also need to hold our leaders accountable to follow through on their promises to end poverty and hunger. During his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama vowed he would end childhood hunger by 2015. His administration has done little to follow through on that promise. We must ensure the government provides the funding for welfare and programs such as WIC and food stamps. When Mr. Obama took office, he increased the funding for food stamps from $3 billion to around $4.8 billion. Although this may sound significant, the increase is only from $92 in 2006 per person per month to $133 per person per month. (33) There should be more funding for school breakfast and lunch programs and the government should implement policies to ensure that the food being served with such programs is healthy, balanced, and nutritious. There should be more funding for the WIC program, which has proven benefits. “The latest scientific evidence tells us that much of the foundation for children’s future health and academic potential is established in the womb and during the first three years of life. By providing a nutritious diet during pregnancy and early childhood, WIC protects the bodies and the brains of millions of children.” (34) The Obama administration has taken steps to increase the funding for WIC, but must monitor the situation to ensure that the funding increases continue. We must elect leaders who will openly discuss the interrelated issues of hunger, education, and childcare and implement comprehensive and effective legislation. According to Chilton, the second, and more important thing is to educate yourself and get involved, hands on, in your community. Food drives and monetary donations have their place, but Chilton notes that engagement is severely lacking. In addition to reading about the scope of hunger in the United States, talk to your neighbors! Get to know the poor members of your community and start to open your eyes, ears, and heart. Listen to what they say and allow them to teach you about what they need. Get to know the organizations in your area and start to volunteer on a regular basis. Sign up to tutor people in your community. If someone cannot read, s/he will never break the cycle of hunger and poverty. You could donate a can of soup to a family, but if the parent can’t read, how can s/he follow the directions?! Those of you with computer, math, or financial skills can sign up to teach at your local community center. Give people the skills and education they need to hold down a steady job. Contact the churches in your area to see if people can use the kitchens during the week. Get involved in church or community programs that teach people how to cook, how to read a recipe, and how to sit together and share a meal. With the smallest actions, and just a little time, you can make an enormous difference in a hungry person’s life Demand that your local supermarket carry local and nutritious food. Supermarkets are required to label the foods that are waxed. Waxed foods seal the pesticides inside and have lower nutritional value. Have you ever seen such labels at a supermarket? Requirements are only effective if they are enforced. Volunteer at a childcare program so that single parents can work and provide for their families. The Baby Cuddlers program (http://www.charityguide.org/volunteer/fewhours/baby-cuddlers.htm has proven its effectiveness at meeting the needs of babies at the beginning of their lives. The most important step is to get involved and to get to know the people in your community who suffer from hunger. Our judgments and misconceptions about poor people who collect any kind of welfare benefit are born out of ignorance and form the values that shape welfare program policies. In many instances, the parent must overcome shame and embarrassment to ask for welfare services. If we want to restore any kind of balance in society, it starts here with meeting the basic need for nourishment. Let’s wake up and change our values from greed and selfishness to compassion and responsibility for our children. To meet the immediate needs of families who are in need of adequate nutrition, Laconneau is sponsoring a food drive. If you would like to contribute, please contact the coordinator of your local circle for details. In Georgia, please contact Deb at georgia@laconneau.org. In North and South Carolina, please contact Elaine at carolinas@laconneau.org. In Pennsylvania, please contact pennsylvania@laconneau.org. In Washington, DC, please contact dc@laconneau.org. The coordinators will provide you with information on the organization with which their circles are partnering in an effort to feed those in need. (1) Marty Moss-Coane, Radio program “Radio Times,” WHYY National Public
Radio, program aired on November 23, 2009,
http://www.whyy.org/podcast/112309_100630.mp3.
|
